Abstract

Currently, South Africa has 18 million teenagers and from a population of 50 million this means that almost 36% of our population is in the teen bracket. As per the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey, almost three quarters (72%) of the unemployed population of 4.5 million people are younger than 25. Fewer than 50% of current matriculants will hold jobs before the age of 24. Public discourse has been dominated by discussions of this spiralling youth unemployment crisis, yet government intervention has been slow and perhaps not out of choice, but due to lack of credible partners to implement policies and interventions on the ground. As part of an ongoing drive to present government with solutions to this crisis, the SA Teen Entrepreneur Foundation is proposing a deliberate intervention to increase the facilitation of teen innovation and entrepreneurship as a means of bringing more young people into the economy.